Family Days
by Okoriwadsworth
Summary: In just a day where they work on getting better, Oliver Queen discovers something about himself and makes a life-changing decision.


A Day Off With The Family.

(Author's Note: This takes place immediately after A New Family, and has one plot hole filled to my satisfaction.

Also, there will be no WestAllen in this fic. The notion that a foster kid and his foster sister end up falling in love has always skeeved me. Instead, we have 2 pairings that make narrative sense and canonical sense.)

Laurel Lance's day jobs and night jobs didn't intersect nearly as much as they crossed across each other like two ships passing in the night. So, when it turned out that she had a day off from both of them, a larger part of her than she was willing to admit wanted to do nothing more than to stay in bed and catch up on sleep.

But, as soon as that thought entered her mind, it left just as quickly. After all, this was what her boyfriend, Oliver Queen, had taken to calling "family days". Everyone who was on Team Arrow, field members and support staff, had taken these days as chances to do the necessary maintenance and logistical work necessary to keep the ship flowing.

So, looking back at her bed longingly, she grabbed her gym bag and headed to the bunker. Sleep could come later. Right now, she was getting herself in the mindset of being the Black Canary. And if she was being honest, she kind of enjoyed knowing that in both her jobs, she was bringing people to justice. It just so happened that she was doing one in pantsuits and classy blouses, and the other in a black catsuit that was cut to her body and her body alone.

_**Meanwhile, in the bunker…**_

There were things Oliver Queen liked about family days. But the best part about it was always the sense that he wasn't alone anymore. Everyone down here, to the last, believed in the virtues of their mission. And because they weren't alone, they could actually begin to see the changes. Businesses were being opened in the Glades again, people were moving back in. There were even rumors that the state government was going to re-open offices in downtown, with the 10,000+ jobs that happened to come along with that.

He couldn't have imagined what it would felt like, how desperate he would have felt, if nothing had ever changed about the city he had given so much of his body to protect. If he could be honest with himself, it'd probably make him darker, more willing to sacrifice the honor and ideals he started this with. Good thing that never happened.

So, as he walked down into the bunker and noticed the full-scale kitchen that they had set up, he smiled. Things were always more fun here.

And then, he heard it. The sound of a breach opening. And through it walked Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow, holding hands. And behind them Barry Allen in his Flash costume and someone new he didn't recognize sprinted into the room, the woman giggling over being transported somewhere at super speed and generally being the kind of cute that would be deeply annoying on someone else, but that he expected from anyone Barry was dating.

It was confusing that they made time for this, but he supposed that they had none of the worries he had about time. When one member of your team can literally breach everyone else back to anywhere they need to go, and the other is so fast that 400 miles seems like no big deal, the concept of taking time for preparation probably seems a lot easier.

As he walked over to introduce himself, he heard the tail end of a conversation between Barry, who was introducing his girlfriend around as a Patty Spivot, and John about how some guy named Zoom had been kidnapped by these things called Time Wraiths and turned into the Black Flash.

Before he could ponder how weird his brother's superhero life actually WAS, he just blurted it out. "Barry, don't you wear black? Why would you call someone else the Black Flash?"

And at that, you could literally hear everything else stopped. Sewing machines were turned off, computers were put to sleep, and every person in the bunker turned their head to him at the exact moment his girlfriend, and the light to his darkness, walked into the room.

Noticing the similarities between the time her bootcamp started and whatever it was that she walked into, Laurel Lance couldn't help herself. She rushed over to Oliver and hugged him like he had returned from Pearl Harbor, noting how uncomfortable he looked.

"Oliver? What's going on?" she said, noticing how everyone else looked distinctly worried as well.

"I think we've figured something out, Laurel, but in order to see if I'm right, I need you to grab one of Oliver's arrows. Not any of the trick ones, just a regular one" said Caitlin Snow, quickly heading into doctor mode as around her Cisco Ramon began fabricating something and John Diggle grabbed Oliver's suit from his mannequin and immediately began looking for the sewing machine and 3-D printer that Felicity Smoak had left here before she left not just the team, but the city altogether.

Grabbing the arrow, noting how much darker green it was than what she imagined the color green to actually be, Laurel nonetheless handed the arrow to Caitlin and then went to remove her heels and change into her training outfit of a short-sleeved Starling City Rockets baseball t-shirt and crimson yoga pants.

"Oliver? What color is this arrowhead?" said Caitlin.

"That's easy. It's black. Why are you asking?" said Oliver, just wanting to get this weird interrogation over with so he can get back to training.

"Oliver, I think you're colorblind. At least, weirdly, for the colors green and red. I'd like to run some tests with a ROYGBIV spectrum, but for right now, I think you're functionally unable to see those 2 colors. Don't worry, though. It's not anything terribly serious. You just have to let Cisco design you a new suit, and let Laurel tell you when it's actually green" smiled Caitlin, her wonderful bedside manner on display again.

"Ok" said a shellshocked Oliver, wandering over to the archery area and distracting himself from the confusion rolling around in his head. If, as they were telling him, he had been wearing black this whole time what did that mean? Was the suit he was wearing, the suit he believed to be a tribute to Yao Fei and Shado, actually that? Or just another lie?

Nonetheless, there was work to be done. He didn't have time to think, or dwell on what this new information meant.

And with that, everyone got started. Patty Spivot and Laurel started sparring, the blonde Central City cop having apparently come to learn some fighting skills from the "badass" friend of her boyfriend the Flash. Cisco started constructing new trick arrows based on the ideas Oliver had left him, and made sure to consult with the "fascinating" ideas that Nyssa Al-Ghul had for some trick arrows of her own. While Oliver's newfound interest in non-lethal options was as a direct result of him knowing in his bones that Laurel would never talk to him again, much less kiss him, if he went back to indiscriminate killing, it turned out that Nyssa had also grown to see the value of not killing as well. He supposed, as Caitlin grumbled about the lack of surgical needles and stitching equipment as she handed Diggle a card for a medical supplies company that would be only all too happy to ship in bulk, that it was down to Laurel's general positivity and good humor that even someone as dark as Nyssa Al-Ghul could find joy in life. He'd never say this out loud, though. Cisco Ramon valued his life ENTIRELY too much to give Nyssa Al-Ghul the impression that she was somehow, even by a picogram, less intimidating than she had been before she decided to stop killing.

It probably helped her mood, too, that she had been dating again. She had a job here in Starling City, working with the city's SWAT program as a tactical trainer with some truly effusive recommendations from Oliver Queen and Quentin Lance. And because this was just how lucky she was, Nyssa ended up dating a cop. A tall and striking woman named Dinah Drake, who shared her love for both milkshakes and fighting.

While Cisco was fabricating arrows and opening breaches back to Central City to get his gear for making his "toys", John Diggle's mind was split in perfectly even halves between counting the number of everyone's weapons and wondering what was going on with his brother. He guessed that it had to be weird to suddenly realize that the world wasn't in shades of black and gray because you were somehow a monster, but because of an actual medical abnormality. But Oliver seemed entirely too off for this just to be about his diagnosis.

Then, all at once, the puzzle pieces fit. Oliver had always worried, perhaps more than he ought to, that his darkness was part of him. Now someone he trusted was telling him that he literally could not see color. How would he feel if that was him? But John also knew Oliver. He knew he would work on what he could control, and that privately when this day was over he'd let Laurel, and him, know what he was going through.

But as he saw Nyssa grabbing plans for their latest attempt to work around the newest mess Malcolm Merlyn had left for them, shanghaiing Roy Harper in the process to come up with siege works, he didn't doubt that everyone would, in their own ways, check in on him.

After several more hours, and a truly outsized amount of pizzas delivered by the Flash, Cisco and Diggle felt confident enough in their newest suit to show it to Oliver Queen who had, by this point, come up with 2 notebooks worth of arrowhead designs including an improvement on EMP arrows and even one with simply "fire retardant arrow?" underneath it. Taking the suit and going to the changing areas the erstwhile Green Arrow wanted nothing more than to be left alone, only to turn around and see Laurel hugging him as tight as she could. Which, considering the newfound strength

"You're just colorblind, Ollie. You're not a monster. You never could be. And every day of my life, from the first day we met as kids to now, I will never know why you love me. I will never understand. But know that I love you as strongly as you love me, and I will spend my life working to prove myself worthy of you" sobbed Laurel, thankful that she had found her waterproof makeup.

"I never said anything, Pretty Bird. Not one word. How did you know?" said Oliver, slipping down to his arrow-covered underwear which had been something of a gag gift from their new tech person Curtis Holt. Oliver figured they'd have to have a talk about appropriate bunker conduct at some point, but since an outsized amount of his swooning tended towards Roy Harper and grumbling about how every member of this team was "cuffed" except for him, he supposed that talk could wait. Firstly, he had to learn what "cuffed" actually meant and why Curtis was so mad about it.

But now, as he put on this new suit and watched Laurel's eyes grow even warmer than they usually were, he knew there was another reason why this talk had to wait.

Walking back into the main room, in a perfect jade-green leather trenchcoat with the hood he had always worn on the island dyed to match and jade-green leather pants, Cisco Ramon and John Diggle looked at each other before shaking hands, each man proud of their work.

Glancing at Laurel, the unspoken question of it being green enough asked and answered, the Green Arrow then looked at Diggle and had a similar conversation before John walked over and grabbed a small black box.

Flipping his hood back, getting down on one knee, Oliver smiled as Laurel's mouth gaped open before he opened the box and revealed the wedding ring his mother gave him.

"All of my life, I dreamt of you. I dreamt of being in your life again, and I know I've not always been the man you deserved. But, you saved me Laurel. Your love for me was the thing that kept me from turning into a monster. And, if you'll let me, I'll spend the rest of my life making sure I'm worthy of that love. Dinah Laurel Lance, will you marry me?"

At this moment, she could have screamed. Honestly, if not for that weird-ass thing that happened to her in Central City, she would have. But even though she had spent time with the rest of Team Arrow working on control, and learning how and when to unleash the full power she had been given, she got the idea she wasn't going to be able to stop herself from screaming. So she nodded her head yes, slowly at first but faster and faster until everyone there had absolutely no doubt that she really did want this.

Still, though, he kneeled. She then realized he wanted to hear her say it, needed the words to leave her mouth. She steeled herself and she told him.

"Yes, Oliver. I will marry you." And with that, a smile so big it erupted out of him crossed his face.

"Oh, and Ollie? It really is the perfect shade of green" giggled Laurel, and the tension in him was broken.

Standing up, he hugged and kissed her passionately, not caring what people thought. He had his home, and he had a family that would help him defend it.


End file.
